IACR ASIACRYPT 2009, Preface

ASIACRYPT 2009, the 15th International Conference on the Theory and
Application of Cryptology and Information Security was held in Tokyo,
Japan, during December 6 - 10, 2009. The conference was sponsored by
the International Association for Cryptologic Research (IACR) in
cooperation with Technical Group on Information Security (ISEC) of the
Institute of Electronics, Information and Communication Engineers
(IEICE). ASIACRYPT 2009 was chaired by Eiji Okamoto and I had the
honor of serving as the Program Chair.

The conference received 300 submissions from which 2 papers were
withdrawn. Each paper was assigned at least three reviewers, and
papers co-authored by Program Committee members were assigned at least
five reviewers. We spent eight weeks for the review process, which
consisted of two stages. In the first four-week stage, each Program
Committee member individually read and evaluated assigned papers
(individual review phase), and in the second four-week stage, the
papers were scrutinized with an extensive discussion (discussion
phase). The review reports and discussion comments reached a total of
50000 lines.

Finally the Program Committee decided to accepted 42 submissions, of which
two submissions were merged into one paper. As a result, 41 presentations
were given at the conference. The authors of the accepted papers had four weeks
to prepare final versions for these proceedings. These revised papers were not
subject to editorial review and the authors bear full responsibility
for their contents. Unfortunately there were a number of good papers that could
not be included in the program due to this year's tough competition.

Tatsuaki Okamoto delivered the 2009 IACR Distinguished Lecture. The
Program Committee decided to give the Best Paper Award of ASIACRYPT
2009 to the following paper: "Improved generic algorithms for
3-collisions" by Antoine Joux and Stefan Lucks. They received an
invitation to submit a full version to the Journal of
Cryptology. In addition to the papers included in this volume, the
conference also featured a rump session, a forum for short and
entertaining presentations on recent works of both a technical and
non-technical nature.

There are many people who contributed to the success of ASIACRYPT
2009. First I would like to thank all authors for submitting their
papers to the conference. I am deeply grateful to the Program
Committee for giving their time, expertise and enthusiasm in order to
ensure that each paper received a thorough and fair review. Thanks
also to 303 external reviewers, listed on the following papers, for
contributing their time and expertise. Finally, I would like to thank
Shai Halevi for maintaining his excellent Web Submission and Review
Software. Without this system, which covers all processes from paper
submission to preparation of the proceedings, I could not have handled
300 papers so smoothly.